Back In Fashion

A state capital that prides itself on its progressivism, Madison can take some getting used to. One brisk March afternoon several years ago, Childress saw a group of women demonstrating in front of the courthouse for the right to go topless on Dane County beaches. To drive home their point, they picketed topless.

Another of the town's traits was apathy toward Badger football. Donna Shalala worked to change that. From 1988 until last January, when she became Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton Administration, Shalala was the university's chancellor. Unlike previous chancellors, she saw no reason why Wisconsin should not complement its academic prowess with athletic excellence. She fired Morton and forced out athletic director Ade Sponberg, replacing him with Pat Richter, a Madison native and nine-year NFL veteran who had caught three TD passes in Wisconsin's 42-37 loss to Southern Cal in the 1963 Rose Bowl.

Richter's first act was to hire Alvarez. Shalala made a habit of dropping in on practices, and she visited Alvarez after tough losses to tell him not to worry. Last February, Shalala backed out of a dinner with the Clintons to appear at a Badger recruiting function, at which she told the crowd, "I told Bill I had to get back and help Barry Alvarez finish the best recruiting class in Wisconsin history."

Now the Badger bandwagon is overflowing. The increased ticket sales at Camp Randall Stadium have helped erase a $2.1 million athletic-department debt. In the process the Camp has also regained its rep as one of the most inhospitable pits in the Big Ten.

The Badger teams of the Morton era were so abominable that students who didn't bag games altogether created their own amusements at the Camp. These included body-passing and the slow-motion wave, which takes at least five minutes to make its way around the stadium. "They still raise hell," says Alvarez, "but now they're more into the games."

Just ask the Iowa State assistant coach who this year took his linebackers on a slow pregame jog past the Wisconsin student section, where they ran into a fusillade of uncooked hot dogs, toilet-paper rolls and marshmallows. Marshmallows? How do you throw a marshmallow 30 yards? "They stick pennies in 'em," says Childress admiringly. Pause. "Of course, we don't condone that kind of behavior."

They don't object to it, either, and they may well see more of it on Oct. 30, when Michigan comes to the Camp, or a week later, when the Badgers host Ohio State. For the first time in three decades a Wisconsin team stands a chance of being fitted for Rose Bowl rings.

Wouldn't those turn some heads on State Street?